


contraband

by hyperphonic



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, alternately titled: ben's very bad no good trip to jakku
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 17:36:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15005927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperphonic/pseuds/hyperphonic
Summary: “How did you find me?” The metal of his assailant’s staff is cool when it presses none too gently against his throat, and not for the first time, Ben wonders if maybe this is how he dies (he should have commed Leia to tell her he loved her before breaking atmo).





	contraband

**Author's Note:**

> **the working title for this particular romp was:** hi, i'm ben solo, welcome to jackass
> 
> **for:** everyone who has dealt with my sad ass for the last few weeks. breakups suck, ben solo and good friends do not. 
> 
> **excuse me ma'am:** no i don't know if i'm going to expand on this, but it's more likely than not tbh.

Ben Solo expects a lot of things when he follows a tangled series of leads to Jakku in search of his Father’s ship. He expects sand (more sand than he knows what to do with), the blistering sun of a desert planet indifferently falling on back alley deals, and the claustrophobic press of people that can only come with a trading outpost. And for the most part, he was right. Jakku is by no means a particularly welcoming planet; the inhabitants are reticent, completely unwilling to give up any information to an offworlder with clean clothes and a blaster not weathered by Rii’a’s wind.

What he  _ doesn’t  _ expect is to find the  _ Millennium Falcon  _ half swallowed by a sand dune behind an abandoned AT-AT. And what he  _ especially  _ doesn’t expect is to find not only the codes from his childhood still intact, but the cargo ramp to be in near perfect working order when it’s hydraulics hiss and send it down. Both of those pale in comparison to the complete and utter unexpectedness of the staff that slams into his stomach and sends the wayward son of Han Solo swiftly to the ground of his childhood home.

“How did you find me?” The metal of his assailant’s staff is cool when it presses none too gently against his throat, and not for the first time, Ben wonders if maybe this is how he dies (he should have commed Leia to tell her he loved her before breaking atmo).

“Find who?” He asks dumbly, brow furrowed in an attempt to focus past the cargo bay’s harsh lighting. At first all he gets in response is an admittedly light tap of the staff against his head, and then a soft inhalation that for all its softness still falls like blaster fire.

“No one.”

“Well, glad we cleared that up.”

Silence stretches out like the last moments of stillness before jumping into hyperspace, and it is (unsurprisingly) Ben who breaks it.

“So can I get up now?”

There’s a cough that sounds suspiciously like an ill disguised laugh, and the staff lands on the durasteel beside his head with a clang. Ben blinks once, ears ringing as the glow panel directly above him is eclipsed by a halo of softly curling hair and the assailant comes into view. She’s (and oh, she’s most  _ definitely  _ a she) stunning, all sharp hazel eyes and a brow cocked suspiciously close to her hairline.

“Depends.” He tries not to think about how quickly her staff could be back at his throat. “Are you going to try and take my ship?”

That prompts a response.

“ _Your_ ship?” 

Ben raises an eyebrow of his own to match the incredulous woman above him and decides to risk rising up onto his elbows to better quip.

“Yes.  _ My  _ ship.”

The staff wielding would be ship thief purses her lips and leans close enough for him to count the freckles spattered across her nose and cheeks (Ben only gets to fifteen before she speaks again).

“Well I stole it from Plutt, so it’s  _ mine  _ now.”

Plutt. That makes sense, Ben thinks as he resumes counting freckles and trying to figure out exactly how the hell he’s going to get off planet without a concussion and somehow still on the  _ Falcon _ . Said Crolute  _ would  _ have lost his Father’s ship to a plucky scavenger with pretty eyes and a lethal staff.

“Fine.” Ben sighs, elbows starting to go numb underneath his weight. She was clearly not about to change her mind; and as he’d bargained his shuttle away once he was sure the ship was reasonably functional and on planet, this was his only way out of a few light cycles on Jakku, it was time to get clever. “ _ Your  _ ship.”

The admission earns him a twitch of the lips that he assumes must be her closest to a smile, and the next thing he knows the staff is planted firmly in between his legs.

“See that wasn’t so hard.” He must have been incorrect in his earlier assumption, as now the scavenger is practically grinning, eyes bright as she edges the butt of her staff higher. “Now get off it.”

In the end, Ben does get off his ship, straightening his jacket and giving a facetious salute as he strides down the ramp and back into the setting sun. However that only lasts approximately four standard hours before he’s stealing across moonlit dunes to scramble up to the ventral airlock.

As it turns out, Ben realizes belatedly, Han hadn’t at  _ all  _ exaggerated as to how cold desert worlds got once the sun dipped beneath their sandy horizons. Gloved fingers shake as he keys in codes drilled deep into the back of his skull, and when the airlock gives an  _ entirely  _ too loud hiss, he steals into the ship and out of the cold with no small sense of relief.

He either must have been much smaller than he realized last time he’d walked the halls of the  _ Falcon  _ or else it had to have shrunk in its time spent languishing on this junkyard of a planet. Everything seems almost comically undersized as he makes his way through familiar hallways towards the cockpit, hoping against all hope that the ship was, in fact, as capable of flight as he’d been assured (and that he wasn’t about to be met with the business end of a staff again). Ben makes it to the common room without incident and takes a second to reminisce as the smell of old upholstery and Wookie hit his nose. The number of nights spend sandwiched between his Father and Chewie in this very room were innumerable, sending nostalgia curling against his ribs with enough force to prompt a hand against his chest. It's with a shake of his head and a sigh that he crosses to the cockpit, only to stop dead in his tracks at the sight that greets him.

Han’s dice, perfectly preserved in their spot above the primary control panel and glinting in the watery light of Jakku’s moon.

“Home.” Ben murmurs more to the ship than himself as he lowers his frame into the pilot’s seat and begins to run preflight checks. He’s got the sublight engines primed and all of the strictly necessary functions running when there’s a hiss of hydraulics and an indignant cry.

“What are you  _ doing _ ?”

Ben doesn’t need to glance up into the transparisteel turned mirror to know that it’s the Scavenger again.

“Getting the hell off this junkyard of a planet. What does it look like?” He snaps as he gives the engines an experimental rev and breaks into a grin.

“You  _ can’t!  _ this is  _ my ship!” _

At this, Ben does look up to meet his unwilling passenger’s eyes in the transparisteel, eyes bright as he straps in and curls a hand around the drive shaft.

“Just did, Sweetheart.”

And then he’s coaxing the  _ Falcon  _ out of her sandy almost-coffin and into the sky.

Rey squeals, calloused hands just barely managing to snag the head of the co-pilot’s seat as they throttle up and into atmo and Ben gives a whoop before leveling out. The dice clink almost knowingly, and it’s with a wild glint in his eyes that he shoots her a grin across the control panels.

“You’re gonna want to strap in.” She does (albeit begrudgingly) only a few seconds before Ben tucks the ship into a barrel roll that toes the line of too tight.

“Good  _ work  _ Baby!” Ben croons, rubbing his free hand against the dash as they break atmo and the relative calm of deep space takes hold. He may have shirked training under his Uncle’s tutelage in favor of following his Father into hyperspace, but Ben’s no stranger to the Force, and in this moment its song is so strong as to make the hair on his arms stand up. The fact is enough to draw his brows up and together as he surveys the readouts in front of him, all holding as steady as he could ever have hoped for a ship that had spent the better part of a decade under Jakku’s sun. Beside him, the Scavenger pants quietly, eyes wide and cheeks pale as she takes in the vast expanse of stars that swim lazily in front of them.

“Like what you see?” He teases, taking a second to relax back into worn leather before beginning preparations to jump into hyperspace. There’s no answer from the woman beside him, and when Ben turns to face her a second time, she looks more crestfallen than he’d expected someone as fiery as her to be capable of.

“We have to go back.” She whispers, and Ben feels the Force dip low as if in complaint.

“No.” He’s never had much of a bedside manner, and now is no exception as he brings a hand up to scrub at his stubble. “The ship is going to need repairs before I can get her through atmo twice more.” And there was no way he was going to find the parts he needed at a reasonable (or even vaguely attainable) price on the rapidly retreating planet behind them.

“I’ll drop you at the nearest port once we land.” He had a hangar just outside of Junari Point, once he’d had a chance to patch the  _ Falcon  _ up there he’d be able to help her get off world again. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than him heading back to Jakku and its omnipresent sands.

“Unless you wanted to come on as my first mate?”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ben takes a second to acknowledge the fact that he doesn’t even  _ know  _ this woman’s name. It’s almost definitely a miscalculation to offer her a place aboard the ship based solely on her work to maintain it, and the way her smile had tucked itself behind his occipital ridge. But Ben’s never much been one for common sense; and in any case, he reasons as his maybe-copilot considers the offer, he needed a second set of hands anyways.

“I have to go back.” Her whisper almost doesn’t clear the hum of the sublights, and Ben catches himself leaning closer as he prompts.

“To Jakku? What’s waiting for you there?” The suddenly very small looking woman swallows thickly, and takes a handful of seconds to answer.

“My family, someday.”

Ben doesn’t quite believe it ( _ and _ , he thinks as he begins to prep the  _ Falcon  _ for hyperspace,  _ neither does she _ ).

It takes five standard light cycles, a few very early morning cups of caf, and one night spent working together on a faulty landing gear for the Scavenger ( _ Rey  _ she informs him as he makes her a cup of caf the morning after they land on Chandrila) to agree to come aboard the ship as the other half of his crew. Ben isn’t quite sure why her quiet  _ I’ll join you  _ sends his heart stuttering so wildly against his ribs, but it does nonetheless. He dwells on it as he reclines against the dated weave of his sheets, chest bare and head nearly spinning as he replays the moment in his head. That night, Ben dreams of ashes and ozone and the image of his gloved hands reaching across the galaxy towards Rey’s.

As it happens, Rey is even better with a hex wrench than he is, and they quickly make a habit of spending late nights together dismantling and repairing the  _ Falcon.  _ He learns that she taught herself how to work on ships from old schematics and a lifetime spent scavenging to survive, that she’d always wanted to work on a piece of Sienar Jaemus engineering, and that the first language she’d learned besides Galactic Standard was binary. In turn, Ben shares stories from his childhood: of learning to fly on Han’s lap, misty mornings on Chandrila spent with C3PO, and the constant pressure of his family legacy. Rey listens intently, usually with some tool clenched casually in her teeth as she struggled with a stubborn piece of wiring, or coaxed converters out of their casings.

Each night, Ben walks her to her bunk (a cramped little room on the  _ Falcon  _ he’d slept in as a child, exactly one door down from his own bunk now) and struggles not to kiss her.

He finally gives in to the temptation on a rainy morning two lunar cycles after they’d broken atmo leaving Jakku.

Rey sits beneath the  _ Falcon,  _ steaming mug of caf in hand as she watches curtains of rain fall from the sky, eyes still wide with wonder born of a desert world even after two months planetside on Chandrila. Arguably Ben thinks she’s gorgeous all the time, but now, with her hair falling in loose waves and the watery light of summer rain spilling over her she’s practically ethereal. He tells her as much in a soft murmur as he settles onto the ground beside her, shoulders brushing and heart racing with the proximity. His desert girl responds with a laugh, eyes bright when she tears her gaze away from the rain to study his face.

“Flatterer.” Ben’s smile in response is soft, but not as soft as the fingers he brushes along the sweep of her cheekbone.

“So I’ve been told.” The rain picks up, drumming a staccato on the durasteel above them. “Runs in the family.”

She rolls her eyes, though the action lacks any real venom, and Ben thinks he’s probably the luckiest man to his name (something that, were Han still alive he would have undoubtedly argued). Around them, the Force hums lowly, a prickle against the back of Ben’s neck that he’d have to be blind to not see reflected in Rey’s eyes.

“Don’t be afraid.” He isn’t really quite sure when they’d gotten so close to one another, or when one of Rey’s calloused hands had made its way up to rest lightly above his sternum. “I feel it too.”

And then his lips are on hers and it feels like flying.

Ben comms Leia that night from the cockpit of the  _ Falcon,  _ feet propped up on the bulkhead as he reclines in the pilot’s chair. Through the open door he can head Rey in the ‘fresher, humming a tune to herself as she lingers in the sonic. As he waits for his mother to pick up, Ben struggles not to dwell too entirely on the image of Rey; sudsy and smiling in the tiny little unit.

“Ben.” His mother’s voice is warm when she picks up, and the smile it brings to his face is enough to distract from the woman just a few doors down.

“Hey, Mom.” There’s a rustle as Leia shifts her position, and then, “and to what do I owe this pleasure?” Ben grins and rubs a hand over his face, well aware that it was impossible to  _ really  _ hide anything from the tiny woman on the other end of the line.

“I’m on Chandrila.” A beat of silence, broken only by the sound of Rey deactivating the sonic. “And I have a girl with me.”

Leia storms the gate approximately two light cycles later, hair done up in elaborate senatorial braids and fire in her eyes. The  _ Falcon  _ practically sings with joy the second she’s onboard, all brightly lit glow panels and happily humming heating system as she sits in the galley, bejeweled hands curled around a cup of Naboo tea. Rey sits opposite her, watching in fascination as the older woman waves a hand and sends Ben hurrying to the synthesizer for another cup of tea.

“So, tell me,” His mother begins, fixing the woman Ben is beginning to worry he loves with a canny stare. “How did you meet my son?”

Rey’s laughter echoes off of the old paneling, and Ben wonder’s if the ship is joining in when the glow panels flicker just a touch. The smile that spreads across his face as Rey begins to tell the story of a sandy Ben stealing aboard  _ her  _ ship is a warm one, and for he first time since Han had died, he feels like he’s found home.   
  



End file.
